Suzette Martinez Standring: Blind jewelry designer sees God clearly

Tuesday

Nov 24, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 24, 2009 at 7:32 AM

Jewelry designer Susan Michel of New York brings a unique insight into gifts. Her one-of-a-kind castings and jeweled flowers are surprising. What is most unexpected is that she is blind. Yet no one would know.

Suzette Martinez Standring

Jewelry designer Susan Michel of New York brings a unique insight into gifts. Her one-of-a-kind castings and jeweled flowers are surprising. What is most unexpected is that she is blind. Yet no one would know.

At a jewelry show in Milton, Mass., the 62-year-old is petite, attractively elfin, and her gaze is direct. Though her blue/gray eyes appear clear, she sees only blurs and tiny patches of detail. She forces herself to greet nearby people but can never tell if they are facing her.

She tells of a “charmed life.” The New York native earned a law degree and then a master’s degree in dance. In 1970, she moved to London with her husband where she enrolled in jewelry design classes at a technical school. On a whim, she called Harrods, London’s famous luxury store, and spoke to a buyer about her small collection of silver cuffs. Michel was then 25.

“I wound up with a front window display at Harrods. She had no idea that I was still taking classes and that my professor was helping me to polish them,” she recalled.

Michel is very proud of her Jewish ancestry but was not raised in a religious tradition.

“We never observed any kind of religious observances, no bat mitzvah, no temple. Life was grand. Spirituality, I really didn’t think about it then,” she said.

Two children, a happy marriage and career success followed. Fast forward to 2003. She was diagnosed with what a doctor thought was a slow-growing retinal deterioration. Michel didn’t change her routine though her vision declined sharply. The day she nearly ran over two little girls in a crosswalk smacked Michel out of her denial.

“That was the first time I thought God was there. I saw their faces and their hair lifted in the wind. If I had been there a second later, I would have killed them,” she said.

A specialist correctly identified Michel has having a rare rod-cone dystrophy, an incurable degenerative condition. She would be blind within months.

“Up until that point, I was cruising along on ‘I can handle this.’ I had always been the smartest, the prettiest, at the top of my class in law school. I always got the job. I always sailed through life thinking that I’ve controlled everything that happened to me in my universe,” she said.

Now blind, Michel controls nothing.

“Somebody has to drive me. I can’t take a cab because I can’t identify money. I can’t match my socks. You’re lost within your space. You’ve left your ability to orient yourself and function the way you used to,” she said.

She faced a fork in the road – give up or go on?

“I had to make a decision, and if you go on, do you just mark time or do you do your best?” she said.

Asking for help was contrary to her personality, but for the first time, she began talking to God, who helped her with an infusion of energy, a lifting of her spirits from fear and depression. That she could continue her design work she attributes to prayer.

“I’ve stopped thinking that it was just coming from my own strength and force of will,” she said.

No longer able to draw, Michel now conveys her ideas to a sketch artist and works with a model maker. Michel can only see details in a tiny patch of her vision, so reviewing designs can take hours with the help of her 34-year-old daughter, Alix, her business partner and a designer as well.

Prayer has brought Michel patience, something she never had before.

“I’m very controlling and to sit there calmly while somebody else is sketching, well, my personality has changed so much. I have to learn to wait, to be peaceful and to trust somebody,” she said.

Humility is another “transformation in progress.”

“I have to learn to accept help. I have to learn to have grace toward other people and understanding when they are trying to help me. I have a ways to go,” said Michel.

Does she blame God for taking away her sight?

No, rather, she believes God can work the best out of a very bad situation.

“I give speeches and write articles and do fundraising for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. They give me purpose,” she said.

But if someone suggests that blindness made her a better person, Michel gets irritated.

“I’m not better, just different,” she said.

Sometimes at night, she cries at the challenges – like never seeing the faces of her two grandchildren.

“I’m always asking other people to describe them to me,” she said.

But her experience led to a genuine relationship with God and a conviction that prayer works. She feels the presence of her beloved father who died, and she talks to him, too.

“Maybe God is learning to function to your highest power in the worst of circumstances. That would satisfy me,” she said.

In the season of gifts, she owns two. She feels comforted and accompanied.

E-mail Suzette Standring at suzmar@comcast.net. She is the award-winning author of “The Art of Column Writing” and teaches workshops nationally.

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